Mass. legislators: We must lead effort to fight climate change

By Lauren FriasBoston University Statehouse Program

Saturday

May 25, 2019 at 1:49 PMMay 25, 2019 at 1:49 PM

Massachusetts was recently named the most energy-efficient state in the nation by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Nevertheless, state Sen. Mark Pacheco, D-Taunton, believes there is more work to be done.

BOSTON – As climate change continues to be a point of contention on the federal level, Massachusetts legislators show more agreement about tackling the issue by raising support for environmentally-conscious initiatives.

State Sen. Marc Pacheco, D-Taunton, chair of the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change, said there should be greater public concern on the need for climate action due to the harmful consequences communities will face in the future.

“From my perspective, climate change is the No. 1 issue, not only in Massachusetts but worldwide, that public leaders at all levels of government should be concentrating on,” Pacheco said. “It has the potential of being an issue that will devastate all economies and have tremendous negative impact on public health.”

Lawford Anderson, a professor of earth sciences at Boston University, said over the last billion years, the Earth has gone through six ice ages due to drastic fluctuations in temperatures. However, since the end of the most recent ice age, Anderson said the planet has warmed at a steady and alarming pace.

“Today, we’re warming at a rate that the Earth has never seen before, not in human time, not in geologic time,” he said. “That’s why it’s really scary. That’s why we need to do something now to change the way we live.”

Ben Hellerstein, director of Environment Massachusetts, a citizen-based environmental advocacy project, said the immediate impact of climate change can already be seen, as evidenced by recent events in the state.

“I think climate change is a huge issue for us here in Massachusetts, and the reality is that we're already seeing the effects of climate change firsthand,” Hellerstein said. “Last winter, for example, our coasts were battered by a series of extreme storms, one after the other, that caused record highs and extreme flooding ... where, literally, there were dumpsters floating down the streets of (Boston’s) Seaport district.”

“We know that that's just one example of the effects of climate change,” he continued. “We're seeing more heat waves, more droughts, extreme snow and rainfall all across the state. We're already seeing the impact, and we know it could get a lot worse.”

Hellerstein added that “the good news is that people are realizing what this issue could mean for them and for their families and their communities,” thus creating more “political will and the desire to take action” against the issue.

The state has taken steps toward more climate action through several bills being heard at the Statehouse, Pacheco said. Among them, he said is a push to cut carbon emissions, to stop funding the fossil fuel industry and to encourage more clean-energy practices through the use of offshore wind and solar panels.

Because of the actions the state has been taking to find cleaner energy alternatives, Massachusetts was named the most energy-efficient state in the nation by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

Nevertheless, Pacheco believes there is more work to be done in the fight against climate change.

“We are moving very quickly, but not as fast as I would like to see us move as a state to embrace a clean-energy future,” Pacheco said. “We've done a lot of good things. We have created, under the policies that we have adopted thus far, over 100,000 private-sector jobs in the clean-energy field.

“But that's at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we could be doing, if we really embraced the potential of clean energy as a way of powering our economy,” he said.

Hellerstein said he also believes in the potential of the state on the energy-efficiency front, saying there is “huge clean-energy potential in Massachusetts.”

“We have more than enough wind potential and solar potential to meet all our energy needs many times over,” Hellerstein said. “That's really why we're calling on leaders at the state level to increase our progress and put Massachusetts on a path to 100 percent renewable energy as soon as possible.”

However, not all Massachusetts residents are on board with efforts to increase funding fighting climate change. Richard Lindzen, a retired professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the amount of funding going into cleaner energy alternatives is “totally insane.”

“It's already costing us a lot more electricity than we need to pay,” Lindzen said. “It's totally unrealistic, and I really don't understand Massachusetts at all. It's just horribly expensive and pointless.”

Although Massachusetts has been making strides in addressing environmentally pressing issues, state Sen. William Brownsberger, D-Belmont, a member of the Senate Climate Committee, said federal officials should also acknowledge the issue in order to encourage climate action on a global scale.

“Ultimately, we have to elect national leadership in the House, the Senate and, most importantly, the presidency that recognize the urgency and reality of the problem,” Brownsberger said. “The moral fact is that we in the United States have to take a leadership role or else the rest of the world is going to suffer.”

Pacheco echoed the sentiment, saying “we need elected leaders to vote on these issues and make sure that we have public policies that are adopted, that not only embrace a clean-energy future, but mandates that one will exist.”

Until that change in political leadership happens, Pacheco said he believes citizens have the power to contribute to the solution on an individual level by supporting political efforts in the fight against climate change.

“I would encourage citizens to empower and demand their legislators to support these types of measures, because without their support, we are likely to have a future that is very dirty, a future that has poor air quality, a future that will see more extreme weather events, more lives lost because of a dirty polluted climate,” Pacheco said. “That’s not the type of future that most people want to see their children grow up and live in. We should all work for a better legacy than that.”

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